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Strike Team
The Strike Team was an anti-crime unit working out of the Barn in Farmington. The Strike Team uses a variety of illegal and unethical methods to maintain peace on the streets, while making a profit through illegal drug protection schemes and robbery. The Strike Team isn't above planting drugs on and coercing confessions out of gang members. Early History The Strike Team was originally formed by Assistant Chief Ben Gilroy as an experiment to fight crime in Farmington. The team started working the same day the Barn began operations. Originally, the team consisted of four members. Despite a bad reputation, Detective Vic Mackey was chosen as the team leader by Gilroy, who had to pull some favors with the Chief of Police to have Mackey approved. Other than Mackey, the three original members of the team were: * Detective Shane Vendrell * Detective Curtis Lemansky * Detective Ronnie Gardocki Due to Mackey's reputation, the Chief of Police demanded immediate results from the Strike Team. Gilroy made Mackey aware of the situation, which eventually prompted the team to take illegal actions as the means to make important arrests and warrant the existence of the team. However, Captain David Aceveda was not pleased with Gilroy's choice of Mackey, and approached Detective Terry Crowley (who worked at the Robbery Division) to be part of the team, and eventually replace Mackey. Former Members Attempts to give the team a fifth member have frequently led to near-catastrophe for the group. * Detective Terry Crowley - killed by Vic in Season 1 * Detective Tavon Garris - crashed after getting in a fight with Shane in Season 3 * Detective Curtis 'Lem' Lemansky - killed by Shane in Season 5 * Detective Kevin Hiatt - reassigned to another department after some snafus in Season 6 Detective Armando 'Army' Renta was never officially a member of the Strike Team, although he worked closely with them after Shane transferred out of Vice and back onto the team. Oficially, Army worked for Vic's Anti Gang Task Force. He left the Barn after refusing to take a lie detector in Season 4. Officer Julien Lowe was also a member of the strike team in later seasons. Clubhouse The Strike Team is housed in a private room that Vic and his team refer to as the "clubhouse". Vic and his team have many private meetings there, where they discuss plans and strategy for the Stream Team. The Strike Team would always close each of the 2 doors prior to meeting, until Season 5 when the doors were removed by Lt. Jon Kavanaugh (the doors were later restored). Vic has Ronnie Gardocki sweep the room every day for bugs. When Lt. Jon Kavanaugh placed a bug in the clubhouse, Vic quickly found it and used the bug to plant false counter-intel. Notes * It based on the LAPD's real-life Rampart Division CRASH unit (Rampart was seriously considered as the series name and was even used in some early promotional ads for the series) http://www.usfca.edu/pj/shield_grant.htm. References